Hey friend,
Everyone's talking about how AI is making content sound the same, and I've never felt it more than scrolling through LinkedIn lately.
My feed is full of posts, including Thought Leader Ads (TLAs), filled with generic messaging and marketing talking points about "scaling efficiently." 🙃
Nobody stops scrolling for that slop.
Most TLAs read like they were written by someone who's never spoken to a customer. And after looking at dozens of LinkedIn accounts running TLAs, I can tell you… that's usually true.
Brands write about what they think prospects care about.
But the best way to improve ad performance is to create them around problems prospects actually talk about.
Here's my playbook to fix your TLA copy in 10 minutes 👇
Step 1: Pull your call transcripts from discovery calls
First, load up whatever tool you use to record sales calls. Filter for discovery calls from the last week, month or quarter depending on how many sales calls you have. The more data, the better.
Then, download or copy the transcripts into a folder.
Make sure these are the first calls prospects have with your sales team, as that’s when they’re most honest about why they’re there.
Step 2: Do deep analysis with your LLM
Feed the folder of transcripts into your LLM of choice. I find Claude Code best for handling large amounts of transcript data without hallucinating, but ChatGPT works great as well.
Use this prompt:
The KB Sales Call Transcript Analysis Prompt
This is the exact prompt we use to turn raw sales call transcripts into ranked pain points, language patterns, and a complete VOC reference doc. Just add your company information to the placeholders.
You are a voice-of-customer (VOC) research analyst for [YOUR COMPANY], a [WHAT YOUR COMPANY DOES]. Analyze the attached sales call transcripts and produce the following deliverables. Use ONLY what's in the transcripts — no assumptions, no filler.
---
## DELIVERABLE 1: Problem Clusters
Group every problem prospects describe into named clusters (e.g., "Tracking & Attribution Failures," "Agency Relationship Breakdown," "Creative Stagnation").
For each cluster, provide:
- Cluster name and one-line description
- Frequency: X of Y calls (Z%)
- Severity: CRITICAL / HIGH / MEDIUM-HIGH / MEDIUM
- 5-8 verbatim quotes with company attribution
- Key sub-themes (bullet list)
- Severity indicators: what makes it urgent vs. ongoing
---
## DELIVERABLE 2: Trigger Patterns
Identify what caused each prospect to reach out NOW — not six months ago. Categorize into internal triggers (new hire, team changes, budget approved, leadership pressure, agency contract ending) and external triggers (performance crisis, platform changes, competitor moves, market expansion, regulatory changes).
For each trigger:
- Frequency: X of Y calls (Z%)
- Typical timing (e.g., "30-90 days after start date")
- 3-5 verbatim "aha moment" quotes with company names
- Common trigger COMBINATIONS (most prospects have multiple simultaneous triggers)
Also extract the "last straw" / tipping point moments — the specific quotes that reveal the breaking point.
---
## DELIVERABLE 3: Pain Point Hierarchy
Rank all pain points by: Frequency × Emotional Intensity × Business Impact.
For each pain point, include:
- What keeps them up at night (fears)
- Business consequences if unsolved
- Political/career risks they face internally
- Urgency level: Burning Priority → High Priority → Moderate → Nice-to-Have
- Objections and fears about solving it (cost, trust, timing, guarantees, commitment, scope)
---
## DELIVERABLE 4: Language Patterns
Extract the exact words and phrases prospects use, organized into:
1. **Problem language** — how they describe what's broken (by category: agency, performance/data, internal resources, creative, competitive)
2. **Goal language** — how they describe desired outcomes (volume, efficiency, quality, strategic)
3. **Emotional language** — frustration, urgency, skepticism, overwhelm, hope/relief, commitment hesitation
4. **Industry jargon** — the actual terms they use vs. what the agency calls them (create a translation table: "Prospect Says → Agency Calls It")
5. **Words that create negative reactions** — terms that trigger skepticism or resistance
6. **Power phrases** — the most resonant prospect-language phrases, ready to use in marketing copy
7. **Red flag language** — phrases that signal deal risk (budget concerns, timeline delays, commitment avoidance, control issues)
8. **Verbal tics and softeners** — hedging, intensifiers, filler patterns
---
## DELIVERABLE 5: Emerging Trends
Identify topics growing in frequency or intensity that signal market shifts. For each:
- Evidence (verbatim quotes)
- Frequency vs. previous periods if detectable
- Implication for positioning and content
- Segment variations by company size, vertical, and buyer role
---
## DELIVERABLE 6: VOC Master Reference
Create a single consolidated reference document for content writers, structured as:
- Pain points ranked by frequency, each with 3-5 supporting quotes and company names
- Services prospects want (ranked table with frequency and notes)
- Why they reached out — trigger catalog (numbered list)
- Emotional triggers grouped by type (Fear, Frustration, Uncertainty, Urgency) with quotes
- Top customer quotes table (Quote | Company)
- Key patterns and insights (numbered, each with a descriptive title and 3-5 sentence explanation of the pattern, why it matters, and how to use it)
---
## RULES
- Every claim must be backed by a verbatim quote from the transcripts
- Include company name attribution on all quotes where identifiable
- Calculate frequencies as "X of Y calls (Z%)" — count each call once per cluster, not per mention
- Rank everything — don't just list. Prioritize by frequency, intensity, and business impact
- Flag where the same quote supports multiple categories
- Note segment differences (SMB vs. mid-market vs. enterprise, by vertical, by buyer role) wherever patterns diverge
- Distinguish between what prospects say unprompted vs. what they confirm when the salesperson raises itCopy the prompt above, paste it into your LLM and attach your sales call transcripts to get a complete VOC analysis in one shot.
The goal here is to find out what moves a prospect in-market.
You're looking for the emotional reasons they reached out to you. Finding the fear, frustration, excitement, or even uncertainty in the first discovery call is what this prompt will pull for you.
You should end up with an output like this to work with:
Step 3: Build TLAs around their problems
Find the pain points that have the highest % of mentions and write LinkedIn posts with a copywriting framework.
The PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solution) framework is ideal for this strategy as it leads with the target audience’s problem in their words, agitates consequences, and then positions your solution.
Some examples of high-performing Thought Leader Ads we’ve run using this exact strategy.
The ad should feel like you read their mind because in a way… you did.
The $5K Campaign That Increased High-ACV SQLs By 50%
I want to walk through some results of how this strategy works as we experimented with it in Q4.
We knew from running sales call analysis that there was growing demand from high-ACV clients for specific PPC services. More customers wanted to experiment with new Google campaigns like Performance Max and switch up LinkedIn Ads campaigns to improve demand generation results.
So, we used this analysis to created a TLAs campaign that:
Agitated a specific problem our prospects described in their own words
Showed how we were already running campaigns for current clients to solve these very specific pain points
Targeted a completely cold audience of B2B SaaS marketing leaders using a list I pulled from Clay
Had a specific CTA tied to the pain point and a link to get a marketing plan to solve it
One of the TLAs we ran in the campaign. It focused on a new ad type from Google (PMax) that prospects were asking about in calls.
We started with 8 organic posts and then I calculated the budget needed to layer these into a high-performing demand generation campaign.
If you don’t know how to calculate your budget, use this LinkedIn Ads Cost Calculator to figure it out. And if you need help setting the mechanics up for the TLAs campaign correctly, here’s a full walkthrough:
The goal was to reach 80% audience penetration and 10x frequency in 30 days.
We put $5K ad spend behind the campaign and saw a 50% lift in B2B SaaS SQLs, 100% CVR to SQL, and a 40% drop in Cost/SQL for the quarter.
No fancy creative or massive budget. Just messaging that actually resonated because it came from the people we were trying to reach.
Here’s a quick checklist to run this play yourself:
If you run LinkedIn Ads 👇
Pull your last quarter's closed/won call transcripts this week
Run them through your LLM (using the prompt I gave you) to pull emotional pain points and direct quotes
Rewrite your top-performing TLA using PAS with the language you extracted
A/B test it against your current version or use it as an experiment in your next TLAs campaign
If you manage the team running LinkedIn Ads 👇
Build a recurring process: monthly VoC extraction from sales calls
Create a shared "customer language" master doc your content and ads teams can pull from
Set a calendar reminder to refresh the master doc (quarterly at minimum)
Measure engagement for VoC ads against other ads you run
Get Your Next Ad Straight From Your Customer’s Mouth
AI can write generic content all day, and most of your competitors probably rely on it for their content and paid programs.
One thing AI can’t do is replicate the exact frustrations and pain points your customers share with your team on calls.
Pulling voice of customer data about why people came knocking on your door and using it in your campaigns will ALWAYS perform better than generic pain points pulled from ChatGPT.
Your competitive advantage is sitting in your call recordings right now.
Use it.
Hope you've found this useful and I'll catch ya in the next one!
🤘
Patrick
P.S. If you're spending more than $5K/month on LinkedIn Ads and want to know if your cold campaigns can be improved, I’m always up for a chat. Hit this link to get your free marketing plan and I'll show you exactly how to structure your 2026 campaigns.